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Since globalisation is being sold as the optimal solution for the world although not offering tangible benefits for humanity, it is deemed necessary to fall back upon Theology and disguise the lack of arguments with dogmas and neoliberal beliefs.

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 Cantor:

I am the Lord, your investor. Without me, there is no growth, no jobs, no money, no life, no freedom. Everything under the sun needs to turn into an investment, into merchandise. Only then will it be of value.

For this to eventuate, I, your investor, require unlimited freedom: freedom to trade, freedom to invest, freedom to transfer capital. And this will have to apply globally.

No government is allowed to limit this freedom. It alone will ensure jobs and affluence for everyone. This fact is based upon the following scientific findings:

1. All human activity is by nature determined by the egoism of the individual. Once this is able to unfold without restriction, the maximum welfare of all is achieved like through an invisible hand.

Objection: A Mother:

IF this were true, humankind would long be an extinct species For then no woman would look after children, care for the old and sick, or do unpaid housework.

But of course in your lordly eyes, this doesn't count as part of the economy. For you, that's a matter of instinct.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

2. Without economic growth, there can be no development.

Objection: A Female Ecologist:

Unless you give up this crazy belief in economic growth, we will need at least two more planets: one for additional raw material, and another one to get rid of our accumulated rubbish. That's absurd!

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

3. An increase in national income will distribute itself from top to bottom for the benefit of all.

Objection: A Jobless Person:

Even Mr. Maucher, the head of Nestlé and president of the International Trade Commission, has come to doubt this. Recently he declared: "It's a fact that one cannot explain to a normal person why it is that every day there's a share price increase, and at the same time more people are losing their jobs .." The number of unemployed today exceeds that of 1933.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

4. The integration of local and national economies into the global economy is a blessing for everyone.

Objection: A Small Farmer:

Yes, I've noticed that. I can give up my business now, as I cannot compete with the prices on the global market. And with the present rate of unemployment, I won't find a new job either. Surely, a "blessing" this is only for the multinationals in agriculture and the chemical industry.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

5. The liberalisation of international trade enables all nations to make the most of their cost advantages.

Objection: A Woman from India/ Bangla Desh etc.:

I see: our poverty is part of your comparative cost advantages. That's why you can pay us a mere fraction of the wages you'd have to pay your own, male labourers. And we have to manufacture your shoes, clothes, electrical goods and computer chips under forced-labour conditions. The fact that this is also causing the jobs in your own countries to disappear is of no concern to you. Capital has no home country.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

5. The liberalisation of the international capital flow will lead to an optimal utilisation of the determinants of production.

Objection: A Female Economist:

The result of the "liberalisation of the international capital flow" in the interest of an optimal utilisation of the determinants of production is evident today when we look at Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, Russia, Brazil. Financial speculation and currency manipulation has caused innumerable firms there to go bankrupt, with the result of millions of people from one day to the next being deprived of their livelihood. The belief that this is just an "Asian" or "Russian" or "Brazilian" 'flu is an illusion. We, too, are surely going to catch it.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

7. Technological innovations will compensate for the ecological drawbacks of the present system of production.

Objection: A Woman/ a Child:

That's all window dressing: What kind of technology is supposed to close the hole in the ozone layer, clean up the polluted groundwater and "dispose" of the nuclear waste? The devastated environment cannot be restored through technology. There is only one thing that will help - and that is: putting a stop to the destruction!

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

8. The system of private property is not only the one best suited for dealing with scarcity, but it also suits human nature better than any other system.

Objection: A Man/ a Homeless Person:

Just the reverse is true: It's private property, egoism and competition that produced scarcity in the first place. The privatisation of public and communal property has nowhere led to increased benefit for the general public but only to the enrichment of a minority.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

9. Whenever the government interferes in the running of the economy, the result is inefficiency and corruption.

Objection: A Woman:

Admittedly there has been, and still is, corruption and inefficiency where governmental bureaucracies regulate the economy. Commission simply ignoring the rules of democracy. And another thing: The bigger the bureaucracies (EU, NAFTA, MAI), the more open they are to the possibility of corruption.

Cantor:

But you've got to believe this! There is no alternative! Whatever is of benefit to Capital, will benefit all of you!

10. There is no alternative to the system of market economy.

Objection: All:

Since the fall of the Berlin wall the whole world is expected to believe in this dogma. But Capitalism, as it exists today, is not the alternative to Socialism, as it exists today. We reject both.

The alternative begins with us renouncing the belief in this religion, relying instead on our own experience, on the human ability to love, on cooperation with each other and with our Mother Nature.

The alternative begins with us renouncing the belief that an economy needs to keep on growing, that a growing GNP will create jobs and a quality lifestyle.

The alternative begins when we cease to believe that there is no alternative.

The kind of thinking which maintains that a Higher Power can be trusted to fix everything if only the government will keep out, has a tradition reaching back for centuries. It is already found in the writings of St. Thomas, where the Higher Power was the "Good Lord". By the way, the era characterised by this basic thinking was called "the Dark Ages'.

(Quote from the farewell speech of SPD social adviser Rudolf Dressler in the Bundestag).

Privatization serving without alternative as an alleged general remedy of neoliberalism is more than a deception of the public. Privatized common properties do not fall into private hands within democratically controlled areas of jurisdiction in favour of public welfare. On the contrary, they enrich global corporations, which factually write their own law and which use their monopoly for further plunder of the planet. Neoliberalism is nothing but a global raid of those in power who indisputably try to expropriate life itself. Neoliberalism reveals by commercial reasoning and acting the apocalyptic character of a world order where violence, hypocrisy and cynicism flourish: alternative solutions are being negated or ridiculed and even criminalized when the desired effects fail to appear. Actually without alternative are the results of neoliberal policy: environmental destruction, perpetuated terror and war and further social decline on a global scale.

 Network against Corporation Rule and the Politics of Neo-Liberalism.

see also: America Is a Religion by George Monbiot, (08. 03)

recommended reading:

- Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms - Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity, Verso, London 2002
- Belen Balanya, Ann Doherty, Olivier Hoedeman, Adam Ma' anit & Erik Wesselius, EUROPE INC: Regional & Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power. London, Pluto Press, 2000
- Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Nick Faraclas und Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), There is an Alternative. Subsistence and worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization, London, zed press, 2001
- Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty. Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia 1997
- Michel Chossudovsky, Disarming the New World Order [http://www.transnational.org//meet/seattle.html]
- Arundhati Roy, Power Politics, South End, 2002
- Saral Sarkar, Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? A critical analysis of humanity's fundamental choices, Zed Books, London 1999